Happy Monday, folks! Lots of buzz this week over Six Apart announcing Motion, a new microblogging application built on Movable Type. We had a first look at Motion here, and while it’s still in beta and has some bugs, it has potential to be a very useful social networking application.

Besides Motion, a few other things were released for MT this week: read more

This is turning out to be a busy week in the Movable Type world. On Monday, Six Apart released Motion, their social networking application built on MT. Then on Tuesday, iThemes — maker of premium WordPress themes — announced the opening of their MT themes store. The availability of themes is one area where MT lags way behind WP. This is especially true when it comes to premium themes. That’s why it’s exciting to see vendors move into the MT themes market.

Yesterday I got in touch with Cory Miller, co-founder of iThemes, to ask him a couple of questions about the premium theme business and his company’s jump into the MT market. read more

There’s been some ruckus about the sudden departure of some 200 themes from the WordPress.org theme directory. Justin Tadlock and Spectacu.la both had a lot of things to say about this.

I emailed Matt Mullenweg, and he explained that the reason for the massive theme purge was that there was a lot of spammy SEO links as well as various violations of the GPL that is required to be hosted in the directory. He also said this, to address the people who are worried about what is really going on with the theme directory:

There were also a few that violated WP community guidelines, like the domain policy. So since Monday we’ve been clearing stuff out en mass. If you’re kosher with the GPL and don’t claim or promote otherwise on your site and your theme was removed, it was probably a mistake. Give us a week to catch up with the bad stuff and then drop a note.

So there you have it. Mystery solved, hopefully. The whole thing is, however, a reminder that a theme marketplace is needed, although I would say that it might be a better idea to offer links to the ones that have already established themselves, given how late to the game a WordPress hosted one would be.

Brian Gardner announced that b5media will use one of the Revolution themes as the base theme across the network, and CEO Jeremy Wright confirmed that it is indeed so. The theme will apparently roll out in a network redesign due next year, and not a moment too soon if you ask me.

While I have nothing against the Revolution Streamline theme, which will be the basis of the new design, I’m a bit surprised to see b5media going with something that is a premium theme available for all. Or is it? I can’t seem to find it on the Revolution Two website, so maybe b5media bought the rights to it? I’ve contacted Brian and Jeremy for a comment on this.

Adii, or Adriaan Pienaar as his real name is, calls himself a WordPress rockstar and sells premium WordPress themes on WooThemes. You’ve probably came across him one time or another if you’ve been looking for a theme designer, or if you’re interested in premium themes.

Artisan Themes is yet another marketplace for premium theme for WordPress, with possible versions for other platforms at a later date. The owner, being Design Intellection’s David Yeiser, launches with one theme, called Renaissance, but there’s likely more to come.

Brian Gardner’s Revolution Theme is one of the more successful premium WordPress themes out there. While I have no idea how many licenses have been sold, the praise and amount of websites running it is testament enough.

As of 12:00 midnight, Friday October 31st, the themes that are currently available at the Revolution theme site will no longer be available. Ever. This was a decision that I made in order to protect the integrity of the current themes and the conditions under which they were released.

I didn’t see that one coming, but it does makes sense. The whole idea with the premium themes model is that you’ll have a small number of sites running the same design, more or less, and not thousands of look-a-likes, as you might have should you just download a popular theme. Wanting to protect your users makes sense. But there is more. read more